Leveraging Social Networking Tools in SharePoint 2010 : Reviewing the User Profile Service Application Settings

• People— Tools are provided to Manage User Properties as well as to Manage User Profiles, Manage User Sub-Types, Manage Audiences, Schedule Audience Compilation, Manage User Permissions, Compile Audiences, and Manage Policies.

• Synchronization— Tools provided include Configure Synchronization Connections, Configure Synchronization Timer Job, Configure Synchronization Settings, and Start Profile Synchronization. These are important because they will determine where the user profiles get their data from and the update schedule.

• Organizations— Tools include Manage Organization Properties, Manage Organization Profiles, and Manage Organization Sub-Types.

• My Site settings— Setup My Sites, Configure Trusted Host Locations, Configure Personalization Site, Publish Links to Office Client Applications, Manage Social Tags, and Notes.

An example of a healthy User Profile service application is shown in Figure 1. Note that on the right side, there are a number of User Profiles that were synchronized from Active Directory.

Figure 1. Manage Profile Service page for a New User Profile service application.

Forefront Identity Manager’s Involvement in Synchronization

Although this topic won’t be covered in depth, it is important to understand that Microsoft Forefront Identity Manager (FIM), formerly known as Microsoft Identity Integration Server (MIIS), is used to facilitate the synchronization process. FIM is automatically installed when SharePoint 2010 is installed but it won’t show up in Programs and Applications.

When troubleshooting synchronization issues, check the services running on the server housing the User Profile services application and verify that the following services are running when the synchronization process is running. These services may show as disabled until a profile synchronization is started:

• Forefront Identity Manager Service

• Forefront Identity Manager Synchronization Service

Reviewing the Setup My Sites Link in the My Site Settings Section

Available on the Manage Profile Service page for the User Profile service application, as shown in Figure 23.3, the Setup My Sites link in the My Site Settings section provides access to several tools that should be familiar to the farm administrator for effective My Site management. These include the following:

• Preferred Search Center— The farm administrator should decide whether to use the default search center or to map to a different search center. If the organization has customized the configuration of the Advanced Search page, for example, and wants the My Sites search to be consistent, the administrator would use this tool to insert the desired page. For example, if the path of http://portalname/search/advanced.aspx was entered, when users search from their My Site, the advanced search page will display.

• My Site Host— This can be changed if needed for the service application. However, any existing sites on the previous host will need to be manually transferred (that is, backed up and restored) to the new host, which can be a time-consuming process.

• Personal Site Location— Typically set to Personal, this can be changed if needed. A managed path matching this setting will need to exist on the web application hosting the My Site.

• Site Naming Format— The farm administrator can choose between User Name (Do Not Resolve Conflicts), User Name (Resolve Conflicts by Using domain_username), and Domain and User Name (Will Not Have Conflicts). Note that domain and username are displayed as ...personal/domain_user (for example, ...personal/abc_user6). Changing this setting will affect any future personal sites created, and will not affect existing personal sites.

• Language— Users can be allowed to set the language of their My Site.

• Read Permission Levels— These accounts will be given read permissions when new personal sites are created.

• My Site Email Notifications— An email string should be entered here, and it will be used when SharePoint sends out email notifications.

Reviewing Other Configuration Tools in the My Sites Settings Section

Configure Trusted Host Locations, Configure Personalization Site, and Publish Links to Office Client Applications Settings can be found in the My Sites Settings section on the User Profile service application page. Each of these is relatively straightforward but can add value to the process of managing and customizing My Site. Configuring trusted host locations can be of specific interest to larger organizations with thousands of users who want to leverage My Site sites, because the idea of putting all users in one “basket” (that is, managed by one service application and stored in one My Site host site collection) may be unappealing. And audiences can be leveraged to determine which user is created in which My Site host to ensure automation of the process. Personalization sites and published links to Office client applications allow the organization to customize the user experience based on audiences, too (as described throughout this chapter).

Following are summaries of the capabilities of these tools:

• Configure trusted host locations— If there are other User Profile service applications, links can be created that specify the URL of the host managed by the service application, and a target audience can be created to determine which users’ personal sites are hosted by that host. A large organization (for example, with 10,000 users) may want to create multiple User Profile service applications, each of which has a My Site Host site collection, and then split up where individuals’ My Site sites are created based on which branch office they are in. Several audiences would need to be created for this purpose, which look at the value of the Office field in AD, and if it matches a specific value, the user becomes a member of that audience when it is compiled. The audiences would then be used to determine where the users’ My Site personal sites are created.

• Configure personalization site— If a link is added here, it will appear at the top of the My Site page. Audiences can also be applied here, to specify which users see a specific link.

• Published links to Office client applications— Links can be created here as a means of publishing links to SharePoint sites and lists when opening and saving documents from Office client applications. Audiences can be applied to determine which users receive these links, and the type of link can be specified as well. For example, Document Library, Slide Library, Portal Site, Team Site, and other options are provided.

Managing Social Notes and Tags

This tool will assuage many of the fears of the farm administrator, who may well be concerned about allowing users to post “whatever they want” in a forum that other users can see. The nature of posting a note tends to encourage off-the-cuff comments, and the farm administrator may want to do periodic searches for certain words to make sure they aren’t appearing. Or an employee may leave the company, and IT decides that his tags should be removed.

This tool is not self-explanatory and can appear to “not work,” so a quick review of how to use it will be beneficial to administrators. In the following example, Contractor1 entered a comment that offended User4, who filed a help desk ticket. User4 didn’t give much information, so the farm administrator needs to do a general search and see whether he can locate and remove the comment. Follow these steps to learn more about the process of managing social tags and notes:

1.	Click the User Profile service application from the Manage Services Applications page, and then click Manage Social Tags and Notes in the My Site Settings section.
2.	From the Type drop-down menu, select Tags or Notes. In this example, the farm administrator was told it was an offensive note.
3.	Either click a User Name and click the Check Names button to resolve, or use the Browse tool to find the username required. Multiple names cannot be entered. In this example, Contractor1 is entered in the name field, and Check Names is clicked.
4.	A URL can also be entered to narrow down the search. However, the view in which the comment appears must be entered or no results will return. In this example, this field is left blank because the farm administrator doesn’t know which list or library the comment was made in.
5.	A date range can be entered. The farm administrator believes the note was entered recently, so he enters a time span encompassing the last week.
6.	The Tag/Note Contains field can be filled out, but in this example, the farm administrator doesn’t have any specific words to search for and so he leaves it blank.
7.	The farm administrator clicks Find to see what Contractor1 has been posting over the past week. A number of results appear, as shown in Figure 2. Figure 2. Using the Manage Social Tags and Notes feature.
8.	The farm administrator checks the box next to the one comment that returns, because he agrees it could be offensive, and clicks the Delete button. He clicks the OK button to confirm the deletion, and the note is deleted immediately.